Cisco Wireless Release 8.1 Bulletin
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PB734449
Overview
The IEEE 802.11ac standard has established Wi-Fi as the primary access network. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index™ forecast, Wi-Fi traffic (53 percent) will exceed wired by 21 percent in 2019. Driven by the explosive growth of the Internet of Everything (IoE) and the emerging trend of wearable devices, the share of smart devices and connections as a percentage of the total will increase from 26 percent in 2014 to 54 percent by 2019. “Wearables” - ranging from smart watches, smart glasses, heads-up displays (HUDs), health and fitness trackers, health monitors, wearable scanners, and navigation devices, as well as “sensors” - have the ability to connect and communicate with the network using technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. These devices will increase network traffic with application data, OS updates, and security updates in high-density environments such as college campuses, stadiums, and shopping malls. Advances in technology are being combined with fashion to match personal styles, along with network improvements and the use of analytics and monetization systems, such as location-based services.
Cisco® Wireless Release 8.1 delivers technological innovations to help customers and partners adapt to these advancements in technology and meet the challenges associated with these emerging trends. This software release enhances Cisco High Density Experience (HDX) complemented by new 802.11ac wave 2 optimized wireless controllers. This release also enables support for highly accurate and innovative location technologies, and delivers best practices to help alleviate the complexity of managing networks with more clients, bandwidth-hungry applications, and high-density network strain to provide an enhanced customer experience on Wi-Fi networks.
Primary Features in Release 8.1
● Cisco Enhanced HDX: New enhancements to the HDX suite include the following:
◦ Dynamic bandwidth selection (DBS) with flexible dynamic frequency selection (FlexDFS) simplifies and automates the configuration of channel width to enable greater operator confidence in using a wider channel bandwidth while reducing radio flapping and optimizing spectrum efficiency
◦ Airtime fairness provides a simple way for WLAN administrators to allocate usage to groups of clients
◦ Optimized roaming extensions add 802.11v BSS Transition Management to optimized roaming to enable the infrastructure to provide explicit advice to clients for reassociation and roaming
● Hyperlocation with Advanced Security enables microlocation accuracy to better serve hyperlocal content, with more frequent location updates for Wi-Fi clients using Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) FastLocate. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) services, including integrated BLE beacons, simplify beacon management. Advanced Security enables security threat detection and mitigation on 802.11ac networks
● WLAN express and best practices on wireless LAN controllers (WLCs) enable simplified operations and enhanced performance, security, and resiliency with best practice recommendations turned on at bootup
Platform Support
Cisco Wireless Release 8.1 is supported on the following platforms and technologies:
● Cisco Aironet® access points running the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) Protocol
● Cisco 2500 Series Wireless Controllers
● Cisco 5500 Series Wireless Controllers (WLC5508 and WLC 5520)
● Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Wireless LAN Services Module 2 (WiSM2)
● Cisco Flex® 7500 Series Wireless Controllers
● Cisco 8500 Series Wireless Controllers (WLC8510 and WLC8540)
● Cisco Virtual Wireless Controller (vWLC) on Cisco UCS® E-Series for Integrated Services Routers G2
● Cisco Virtual Wireless Controller (vWLC) (Virtual form factor)
● Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE)
● Cisco MSE Virtual Appliance (vMSE): VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V
● Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX)
Management support for Release 8.1 will be delivered with Cisco Prime™ Infrastructure Release 3.0.
Recommended Releases for Production Deployments
Maintenance Deployment (MD) releases: These long-lived software releases provide bug fixes and ongoing software maintenance:
● Release 8.0 is the next MD release train (a release in this train will be qualified as MD)
● Release 7.4 is the current MD release train, and 7.4.140.0 the latest recommended release
Early Deployment (ED) releases: These software releases provide new features and new hardware platform support as well as bug fixes:
● Release 7.6 is recommended for customers with 802.11ac deployments. Customers are advised to upgrade to Release 7.6.130.0 to take advantage multiple software fixes in the release
● Customers with earlier ED release versions of 7.2 or 7.3 should upgrade to 7.4.140.0
● Customers with earlier ED release versions of 7.5 should upgrade to 7.6.130.0
Refer to Guidelines for Cisco Wireless Software Release Migration for additional details
New Access Point and Wireless Controller Features
Table 1 describes the new features in Cisco Wireless Release 8.1.
Table 1. Cisco Wireless Release 8.1 Features
| Feature |
Description |
Benefit |
| Support for new WLC5520 and WLC8540 wireless controllers |
The 5520 and 8540 WLCs are optimized for 802.11ac Wave 2 with support for centralized, FlexConnect, and mesh deployment modes of operation. |
Future-ready support for highly scalable enterprise and service provider networks with simplified licensing, simplified setup, high-availability resiliency and integrated services. |
| Hyperlocation with Advanced Security* |
The Hyperlocation module provides improved location refresh with FastLocate and Advanced Security with Cisco CleanAir®, wireless intrusion prevention system (wIPS), and rogue detection capabilities for 802.11ac networks. This module also provides an integrated BLE beacon. When used with a hyperlocation antenna, the solution uses Wi-Fi signals from the client to measure time (range) and angle of arrival (direction) and provides client location with up to 1m accuracy in multi-access-point deployments. |
Accurately determines client location for microlocation targeting with hyperlocal content. FastLocate enables real-time device and asset tracking. The integrated BLE beacon simplifies beacon management by removing battery life concerns and enables centralized visibility of beacon health. Advanced Security detects and mitigates security threats on 802.11ac networks. |
| BLE proximity beacon detection using CleanAir®
CMX 10.1 provides a centralized platform to monitor and manage BLE beacons |
Access points use the existing CleanAir subsystem to detect and locate BLE devices used as proximity beacons. Existing CleanAir-capable access points can detect and locate BLE beacons. |
Provides investment protection and security for BLE services. Existing CleanAir access points can enable asset tracking of legitimate BLE devices (includes alerting of missing/moved BLE devices). “Rogue” proximity services beacons (BLE devices that have been deployed without the permission of the venue owner and possibly for malicious purposes) can be monitored, detected, located, and reported. |
| Enhanced HDX:Dynamic bandwidth selection (DBS) |
Automatic and intelligent configuration of 5-GHz channel bandwidth (20, 40, 80 MHz) for “best” channel width. Achieved by learning both client mix and presence of neighboring access points and wireless networks. |
Provides simplified WLAN configuration, improved spectrum efficiency (uses only what is needed), and optimized high-density performance. |
| Enhanced HDX: Flexible dynamic frequency selection (FlexDFS) |
Automatically adjusts both channel selection and channel width for 5-GHz spectral regions requiring radar detection and avoidance. |
Only the channel segment that the radar is detected in is intelligently and automatically abandoned. This enables use of the maximum allowable amount of RF spectrum, and spectrum efficiency is optimized, resulting in an improved ROI for 5-GHz deployments. |
| Enhanced HDX: Airtime fairness* |
Enables an administrator to allocate downlink airtime to groups of clients in a shared WLAN. |
Provides improved fulfillment of service-level agreements (SLAs) by providing a simple way for a WLAN administrator to assign downlink airtime per customer. |
| Enhanced HDX: Enhanced interference mitigation |
Event-driven radio resource management (ED-RRM) is triggered by Wi-Fi interference (faster channel change than the typical dynamic channel assignment [DCA] cycle in RRM). |
Rogue networks can appear faster than a typical DCA cycle will report. This feature enables faster mitigation for Wi-Fi interference avoidance and provides improved protection of WLAN services, comparable to non-Wi-Fi interference mitigation with CleanAir. |
| Enhanced HDX: Optimized roaming extensions |
802.11v BSS Transition Management (the infrastructure provides explicit advice to clients for reassociation and roaming). |
Greater airtime efficiency is achieved by improved load balancing, as better RF connectivity reduces airtime, and less scanning by clients reduces airtime used for Wi-Fi roaming. |
| Fast roaming for connected transportation |
Maintains reliable Wi-Fi connectivity for workgroup bridges (WGB) mounted on vehicles moving at high speeds of upto 100km/h, such as rapid transits. |
Passengers on the vehicle that are connected to the network hosted by the vehicle will stay connected. This feature uses optimized roaming v2 (extensions) above. |
| Application Visibility and Control (AVC) for FlexConnect local switched access points |
This release extends the AVC functionality from the wireless controller to the access point. AVC on a FlexConnect access point provides application visibility and control for locally switched client traffic. AVC on FlexConnect uses Protocol Pack 8.0 and Cisco Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) engine version 16. |
Helps the network administrator improve the quality of experience of key applications at the local site by dropping or rate-limiting high-bandwidth noncritical applications for locally switched clients, in addition to the centrally switched traffic that is traversing over the WAN. |
| Monitoring the high-availability (HA) standby WLC |
Enhancement to the HA-MIB that enables the administrator to monitor the status and health of the active and standby controllers. Standby WLC information is available using command-line interface (CLI), WLC GUI, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Management platforms can use the SNMP information to monitor the HA pair instance using a single interface. |
Administrators gain more insight into the health, CPU utilization, and process memory of the active as well as standby WLC to troubleshoot redundancy issues. The standby and active WLC status continue to be managed using one interface per HA pair. |
| WLC integration with Lync SDN API |
This feature enables the Cisco WLC to integrate with a Microsoft Lync server. Using Lync SDN API, the Lync server sends out notification when a Lync event (voice call, video call, file transfer, or desktop sharing) occurs on the network. The Cisco WLC interprets the API messages to take appropriate quality-of-service (QoS) actions and provides more visibility (mean opinion score, Lync client heath) into the Lync events on the wireless network using the Lync SDN dashboard. |
Provides real-time visibility into the Lync call metrics on the wireless network to prioritize Lync voice, video, and desktop sharing. Also provides monitoring of all Lync calls placed on the wireless network, enabling easy troubleshooting of Lync call issues. |
| AVC enhancements for user role, device, and application-specific policy |
Updates and enhancements include:
● New Protocol Pack 9.0
● New NBAR engine version 16
● Per-client authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) override for AVC profiles
● AVC per-application, per-client-based rate limiting on WLAN
● Integration of AVC profiles with local policy classification on WLC
● AVC directional QoS differentiated services code point (DSCP) marking for upstream and downstream traffic
|
Enables organizations to provide appropriate access to wireless users based on roles by properly managing applications and their bandwidth use instead of incurring costly upgrades. |
| WLAN express and best practices on WLCs |
Simplifies the initial (day-zero) setup for WLCs with over-the-air setup and best practice defaults that enable RF parameter optimization and network profiles. A new RF dashboard enables easy monitoring of RF parameters. An audit page on upgrade helps ensure easy compliance reporting with best practices and provides a one-click fix-it option. |
Simplified operations and enhanced performance, security, and resiliency with best practice recommendations turned on at bootup time. |
| Seamless roaming with Inter-Release Controller Mobility (IRCM) between WLC8510, WLC8540, and WLC 5220 with the WLC5760 |
Enables seamless mobility and wireless services across high-scale controllers running AireOS and Cisco IOS® Software using new mobility for features such as Layer 2 and Layer 3 roaming and guest access/termination. |
Enables seamless roaming for clients for deployments with a mix of different types of WLCs. |
| AAA override of VLAN for FlexConnect |
Allows a VLAN name to map to different vlan IDs depending on the local site or FlexConnect group. |
Simplifies deployments by allowing use of a common VLAN name across different FlexConnect groups that have differing vlan IDs configured. |
| Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support for virtual WLC |
The virtual WLC adds support for KVM. |
Expands the types of deployments that can take advantage of the virtual footprint WLC. |
| Primary, secondary, and tertiary guest anchor capability |
Assigns a fixed priority to each anchor controller or HA pair. The highest priority controller will be designated as the primary anchor. This feature also allows load distribution in round-robin fashion if the priorities are the same. |
Provides a mechanism to deterministically assign primary and secondary guest anchor controllers based on physical proximity or load preference for the anchor controllers. |
| Multicountry domain support on WLC |
Enables multiple country codes to be configured on a single WLC with bridge mode access points connected. |
Several WLCs deployed across multiple countries can be consolidated to a single WLC to manage access points in multiple regions. |
| Improved Mesh convergence time |
Builds upon improvements made in the 8.0 release by adding channel change notification messaging, further improving network availability times. |
Minimizes network downtime after mesh node failure. |
| Ethernet over generic routing encapsulation (EoGRE) tunneling from WLC and access point |
Enables tunneling data traffic from WLC or access point to a mobile packet core using EoGRE tunnels. |
Enables service providers to aggregate traffic from hotspots to mobile packet core networks. Service providers can offload their mobile networks to a Wi-Fi-based access mechanism and continue to manage traffic in the service provider mobile packet core infrastructure. |
| Cisco TrustSec® support on 8500 Series WLCs and WLC5520 |
Security Group Tag Exchange Protocol (SXP) support on WLC8510, WLC8540, and WLC5520 can be used to advertise SGT information to SGT-capable switches so that appropriate role-based access control lists (RBACLs) can be activated depending on the role information represented by the SGT. |
Enables organizations to secure their networks and services through identity-based access control for anyone, anywhere, anytime. The solution also offers data integrity and confidentiality services, policy-based governance, and centralized monitoring, troubleshooting, and reporting services. |
Connected Mobile Experiences and Mobility Services
Detect, connect, and engage users: Whether retail, hospitality, transportation, healthcare, education, or government, a venue’s visitors are always on, always connected. Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) lets customers tap into this connected lifestyle and provide relevant mobile content while gaining meaningful analytics.
Cisco CMX Release 10.1 unveils a newly redesigned, high-performance, scalable software platform to meet the mobility services needs of high-density Wi-Fi deployments. Cisco MSE integrates with Cisco Unified Access™ infrastructure to provide a comprehensive set of real-time location-based services and is a core component of the CMX solution.
Release 10.1 introduces a new user interface designed to inform, engage, and communicate trends from large volumes of data. The widgets can be customized to focus on key insights and surface actionable information such as the percentage of visitors crossing from one area to another area. The analytics dashboard in Release 10.1 provides real-time information on Wi-Fi clients and intuitive reports that retail and enterprise customers can use to understand the traffic behavior across their sites (see Figure 1).
Cisco CMX FastLocate technology enables quick location refresh for connected clients, as shown in Figure 2. Release 10.1 makes use of Cisco CleanAir technology and provides a centralized platform to monitor and manage BLE beacons.
Figure 3 shows the CMX Connect Experience Dashboard, where an administrator can manage the onboarding experience for different locations.
Cisco Prime Network Infrastructure 3.0
Cisco Prime Infrastructure is a network management platform that supports lifecycle management of the entire network infrastructure from one GUI (Figure 4). It provides network administrators with a “single pane of glass” solution for provisioning, monitoring, optimizing, and troubleshooting both wired and wireless devices. Robust GUIs make device deployments and operations simple and cost-effective.
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.0 allows basic monitoring and management of Cisco Wireless Release 8.1, with technology packs to enable new feature support.
Service and Support
Services from Cisco and our partners can help customers assess, design, tune, and operate their wireless LAN to transparently integrate mobility services and take advantage of the systemwide capabilities of the Cisco Unified Wireless Network.
Our professional services help customers align their interference management, performance, and security needs with their technical requirements to better use the self-healing, self-optimizing features built into the silicon-level intelligence of Cisco CleanAir technology and the increased performance of the 802.11ac standard. These services can enhance deployment and operational efficiencies to reduce the cost and complexity of transitioning to new technologies.
Our technical support services help customers maintain network availability and reduce risk. Optimization services provide ongoing assistance with performance, secure access, and maintaining a strong foundation for business evolution and innovation.
For More Information
For more information about planning, building, and running services for Cisco CleanAir technology, Cisco 802.11ac, and the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, visit Cisco Technical Support Services or Cisco Professional Services at http://www.cisco.com/go/services. For more information about Cisco wireless products, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/wireless.
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